Past imperfect, present tense

Dispossession of indigenous Australians of their land, culture and children lies at the heart of the "history wars".

Attacks on academic scholarship are nothing new; attacks on those who challenge
settled certainties, even less so. In 1937, in preparation for his presentation
of that year's Macrossan Memorial Lectures, Justice H.V. Evatt, chairman of
the board of the Mitchell Library, in Sydney, immersed himself in the Macarthur
papers and reconsidered Macarthur's insurrection against governor William Bligh.

Thumping the desk of the startled principal librarian, Evatt exclaimed: "I'm
for him!"

As Evatt's biographer, Kylie Tennant, describes, these lectures on "The Overthrow
of Bligh" "caused a stir in Australian historical circles. Evatt was the first
to say roundly in public that John Macarthur was a scoundrel".

But what are we to make of Evatt's exclamation - a statement of support, a
type of scholarly barracking, or the "Eureka" of a curious intellect? Evatt
had recognised the partial, incomplete state of earlier historical representations
that had too readily cast Bligh as the coloniser villain against the entrepreneurial
advances of the local hero Macarthur; an easy dichotomy much assisted by the
popular cinematic fiction in Charles Laughton's portrayal of an unattractive
and singularly unpleasant Bligh. The suggestion that the bad guy was not so
bad after all (and that the good guy was certainly not so good), upset a generation
of historians and enraged entrenched Macarthur family interests alike, reaching
"even into the tranquilities of scholarship".

It is intriguing to see that the techniques of scholarly denial, dismissal
and destruction have changed little in 70 years. Stuart Macintyre's The History
Wars shows that the dismissive labelling, the confusion of objectivity and
neutrality and, in particular, the politics of the footnote, remain the hallmarks
of the current debates.

Dispossession of indigenous Australians of their land, culture and children lies at the heart of the "history wars". The history wars confront our understanding of nation . . . how we see ourselves and our contemporary political decisions.

The incorrect citation is highlighted in Keith Windschuttle's attempt to discredit
the earlier works on Aboriginal history by Lyndall Ryan and Henry Reynolds.
Manning Clark's erroneous references have similarly been decried. The gleeful
pouncing on an errant citation - as if an entire work can now be readily dismissed
- is one of the more unsavoury aspects of what has been termed "the history
wars". To suggest that this is anything other than error is unfair; to see it,
as Windschuttle does, as "fabrication" is dishonest.

In this, Macintyre's work is a defence of the profession, a call to the core
elements of historical research "the interrogation of the evidence and commitment
to critical inquiry", a reminder of the historian's "duty to objectivity".

Macintyre details instances of scholarly dispute, from Geoffrey Blainey to
Clark, Windschuttle and Reynolds, from the Bicentenary celebrations to the civics
education debate, concluding with recent arguments about the National Museum.
What ties these at times disparate elements together is an overwhelming sense
of executive dominance and corporate control over the public presentation of
history, an endorsed, officially sanctioned, notion of historical truth. This
is most explicit in Macintyre's consideration of the National Museum, which
suggests that even at the level of labelling and exhibits, the museum has been
closely scrutinised by the Prime Minister.

Two spectres loom over The History Wars: Prime Minister John Howard,
and the receptive media columnists and other "court historians", as Gore Vidal
terms those dependent on the patronage of power. Macintyre refers frequently
to those media commentators with "space reserved for their pronouncements",
yet whose role and relationships (between them, their media outlets and the
Howard Government) remain frustratingly unexplored.

Originally taught and conceived as an offshoot of British history, the idea
that Australia could have its own history, or even a history taught from other
than the coloniser's gaze, is a relatively recent one. No history is, in Terry
Eagleton's words, "a continuum, free of decisive rupture, conflict and contradiction".
These are the very aspects that are at once fascinating and demanding of constant
reconfiguration and reassessment. New sources, new perspectives and new ideas
are the fundamentals of intellectual progress, and arguments over them are commonplace;
we should hardly expect it to be otherwise. Why, then, have these rather unremarkable,
pedestrian, instances of disciplinary difference moved outside the walls of
academia and become so polarised within the broader community?

At the heart of the history wars is the dispossession of indigenous Australians
of their land, their culture and their children. This is the conflict that is
so often still denied. The Mabo decision overturning the "legal fiction" of
terra nullius was such a "decisive rupture", it not only demanded a new legal
approach to native title, it ushered in a new political approach. In its reference
to historians such as Reynolds, the judgement highlighted the power of historical
argument.

At the same time the Mabo decision opened a space for the consideration of
oral sources within a legal setting through its recognition of a form of title,
native title, the preservation of which lay not in a documented Torrens title
but in evidence of traditional ties between land, spirituality and people.

The history wars gathered urgency in an almost reflex objection to the historical,
legal and political implications of the Mabo decision. For, as Reynolds recently
noted, it is this notion of land title that lies behind Windschuttle's campaign,
"he seeks to bring the concept of terra nullius back to life". The history wars
confront our understanding of nation, the manner of settlement, how we see ourselves
and our contemporary political decisions.

Nevertheless, there is something primeval in the rush to reaction in the history
wars, the perceived threat to national unity and cohesion, the fear of threatened
supremacy. Banal and dismissive labels - latte set, chardonnay set, chattering
classes, bleeding hearts, the guilt industry, black armband view, elites - minimise
understanding and reduce historical debate to absurd sloganeering.

The personalised anxiety evident in self-directed responses (denials of "personal
guilt" and of "individual responsibility") reveals an inability to confront
the manner and the continuing effects of dispossession. It is a view that eclipses
suffering and sees in compassion only civic weakness and personal negation.
As if to admit to the suffering of indigenous Australians and the illegality
of their dispossession, is to threaten the self and, collectively, the nation.

No history is all straight lines, and it is in its contrariness and unpredictability
that Australian history inspires continued cultural reflection - from Sidney
Nolan's Kelly series to Peter Carey's Ern Malley. This is what we risk losing
in the banal strictures of the history wars, the marvellous creativity in the
interplay between facts and interpretation that is history.

Associate professor Jenny Hocking is director of the National Centre for Australian
Studies at Monash University.